Indonesia's Bird Flu

[Jeepers]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24984596/

 

updated 11:05 a.m. ET, Thurs., June. 5, 2008

 

JAKARTA, Indonesia - A 15-year-old girl died of bird flu last month, becoming Indonesia's 109th victim, but the government decided to keep the news quiet. It is part of a new policy aimed at improving the image of the nation hardest hit by the disease.

 

Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari said Thursday she will no longer announce deaths immediately after they are confirmed. But she promised to make the information available on a regular basis eventually, several cases at a time.

 

"How does it help us to announce these deaths?" she said after confirming that the girl from southern Jakarta tested positive on May 13 and died one day later. "We want to focus now on positive steps and achievements made by the government in fighting bird flu."

 

Indonesia's decision could aggravate the World Health Organization, which waits to update its official tally of Indonesia's bird flu deaths until after they are formally announced by the government. The toll on its Web site stood at 108 on Thursday — accounting for nearly half the 241 recorded fatalities worldwide.

 

The country's health minister has clashed with WHO over bird flu before.

 

Supari stopped sharing bird flu samples with the global body in January 2007 after learning that some coveted data about the virus was being kept in a private database at a U.S. government laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and made accessible to only a handful of researchers.

 

She worried that pharmaceutical companies would use her country's viruses to make vaccines that were ultimately unaffordable for developing countries. She has called for the creation of a global stockpile of lifesaving drugs, price tiering or other multinational benefit-sharing programs.

 

At present, all of Indonesia's virus samples are kept at a Health Ministry laboratory. DNA sequencing — used for risk assessment, diagnosis and to signal possible mutations — is carried out by scientists at the nearby Eijkman Institute.

 

"We have the capability to do this ourselves," Supari said.

 

So far, the virus remains hard for people to catch. Most of the world's 388 recorded human cases fell ill after contact with infected birds. But scientists have been closely monitoring the H5N1 virus, fearing it could potentially mutate into a form that spreads easily among people, possibly sparking a pandemic.

 

Until recently, Indonesia's government announced bird flu deaths by e-mail and provided an almost 24-hour information center for confirmations.

 

It gradually abandoned that practice several months ago, often burying news of deaths on the ministry's Web site.

 

The latest policy shift means no posting will be made until deaths have already been reported in the media, said Supari, who wants the focus now to be on improvements made in fighting the H5N1 virus nationwide.

 

She said only 18 people have been infected in the first six months of 2008, compared to 27 during the same period in 2007 and 35 in 2006 — something she attributed to improved surveillance and public awareness.

 

But the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization issued a critical statement in March, saying Indonesia's efforts to control the disease in poultry are failing. The H5N1 virus is entrenched in 31 of the country's 33 provinces and will continue to kill humans until it can be controlled in birds, it said.

 

 

[Aint2nuts]

Supari stopped sharing bird flu samples with the global body in January 2007 after learning that some coveted data about the virus was being kept in a private database at a U.S. government laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and made accessible to only a handful of researchers.

 

She worried that pharmaceutical companies would use her country's viruses to make vaccines that were ultimately unaffordable for developing countries. She has called for the creation of a global stockpile of lifesaving drugs, price tiering or other multinational benefit-sharing programs.

 

 

What a selfish pov!

 

 

 

 

[sassenach]

Question: Did you mean she called for a thing to prevent the vaccines or medications to fight the bird flu from being available at all or something like that? I am not sure what you meant in your post.

[sassenach]

oops just read the very first post. ok, got it, thanks@ u both.

[Mother]

Was she being selfish or was she watching out for her country citizens and other poorer nations?

 

She is stated as saying. ""She worried that pharmaceutical companies would use her country's viruses to make vaccines that were ultimately unaffordable for developing countries. She has called for the creation of a global stockpile of lifesaving drugs, price tiering or other multinational benefit-sharing programs.""

 

Wanting the infromation to be shared with ALL scientists is not selfish. What IS selfish is the US keeping the database private and only giving it out to a few researchers, most likely those who are connected with a pharmceutical house as well.

 

While it is true that it could be helpful if they could find a vaccine for this disease it is also true that there is a HUGE financial agenda here. President Bush urged us to have the common flu vaccine so that the Pharmceutical houses would have enough MONEY to fund research and to encourage them to continue to MAKE vaccines at all. It's all about money and Supari is afraid that they will make vaccines so costly that undeveloped nations will not be able to afford them and they will be the ones worse affected by the disease.

 

This is NOT an idle thought, it has happened again and again around the world with different things. One was wheat many years ago when they "developed" a wheat strain that would be resistant to rust but it was so costly that those countries that depended on wheat as their staples couldn't afford it until a UN program got together enough MONEY from the US and other RICH countries to send it to them. Of course, THAT made those countries beholden to the UN and those RICH countries.

 

Bird flu is a real and dangerous threat to the world but it is also a tool being used by many countries and possibly the UN to control. It is the old thing of we are better than you are at knowing what you need. Indonesia, like China and India and a few other countries are trying to protect their own just like the US, hopefully, is doing for us. Remember, the US is no longer seen as the big all powerful nation it once was. It no longer has the best medical expertise because the expertise often comes from or is connected to the big pharma houses and is therefore suspect in most countries.

 

I'm not running down our country. I am just stating where we are in the eyes of the world at the present time. The US is not as physically prepared for the Bird Flu, at least not openly prepared that is, as some other countries, the UK for example. Once again, as for EMPs and biological attacks and war, the US has chosen to take the offensive and try to keep it from our borders instead of being defensive and preparing. I pray daily they have made the right choices.

 

It is my very humble opinion that we need to be as ready for dealing with sickness as we are to deal with food shortages. We have already been told by our president that if the Bird Flu hits the US we are "on your own". States have been given a one time fee to prepare for it individually but those funds are small and ineffective. If you go to your states health department Bird Flu section you will most likely find it links back to www.pandemicflu.gov at which site you can also link back to your own state. You can also go to your county health department web site if you have one but mostly you will find they have prepared for triage, meaning how to determine who gets the vaccine and who gets treated. Some states do have their own pandemic flu preparedness plans online and in booklet form but most are just using the government guidelines.

 

You can also find our government's National Pandemic Plan online, all hundreds of hundreds of pages of it. All about who (,meaning which department, branch, committee, etc) does what and where and how. Be sure to look up the place in there where it says the military will be used to "put down insurrections" meaning the outcry it's own citizens are going to make when they find they have no government help even though we've been TOLD we will have none.

 

If you are interested in reading more this is a press reliease from 2006 that has a link to the National Pandemic Plan I believe.

 

http://usinfo.state.gov/gi/Archive/2006/May/03-209150.html

 

[serendipity]

Originally Posted By: Mother

The US is not as physically prepared for the Bird Flu, at least not openly prepared that is, as some other countries, the UK for example.

Mother, do you have any sources or data or links that I could look at to understand better what you mean by the UK being better prepared than the USA? I found this to be an intriguing statement!

Thanks!

[Mother]

Sorry, I don't think I have the links at hand but you might find them mentioned in some of the back posts here. When the bird flu was the big topic of the day, about two years back, the UK went out on a limb first and ordered body bags by the hundreds of thousands and made plans for temporary morgues all over the place. They knew that people would die when it hit. They pushed their overall pandemic plan much faster than most other countries. I based my statement on the newspaper reports of that time and on the fact that while our president was telling us that we would be on our own if it hit, the UK was going about their preps.

 

I haven't read this thoroughly but perhaps it will give you some idea where they are at now.

 

http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publichealth/Flu/P...icFlu/index.htm